On a recent RAW, fans young and old got to see one of the greatest tag teams of all time, The Legion of Doom (or the Road Warriors, whatever floats your boat) make another return to the WWE. But, this return was another bad memory for the fans. I'm guessing that some of your are asking, "What bad memories? The LOD has always kicked ass until their RAW match." Well, loyal reader, let's gas up that old Wayback machine (that sucker is going to get a lot of miles as long as I'm writing), and look at some of the bad tastes that have been left in our mouths by Hawk and Animal.

Our first stop takes us back to 1992. Here, I will introduce you all to Rocco. Now, this isn't Rocko, Mankind's Rock themed sock puppet, this is the second manager of the Legion of Doom. After recently reuniting with their original manager, Paul Ellering, we heard that there was a secret to the LOD's success. That secret was this little puppet that Paul shoved his hand into named Rocco, a leather jacket clad Pinocchio. How badass is a tag team riding down the isle on Harley's if they are managed by a decent manager with his hand up a puppet's ass?

Now, whoever the hell thought that this was a good idea, should have been shot. While Rocco was supposed to be cute, Ellering's voice for the puppet (as well as the worthless nuggets of wisdom that would spew from the creatures wooden mouth), were so gratingly annoying that it drove fans away. Soon after his debut, the WWE unceremoniously dumped Rocco. I, personally, hope that the damn puppet was put through a wood chipper and the ashes set aflame. Back into the Wayback, kiddies. We must be moving along...

We now take a trip only five years ago, to 1998. At WrestleMania XIV (that's 14, for those who don't know Roman numerals), The LOD returned to the WWE, but they have changed. Now, Animal is wearing short tights (which is a little scary looking, if you ask me), and the team is now managed by gold digging ring rat, Sunny (Tammy Lynn Sytch). And, to date the team, they have a new name, LOD 2000. But, have no fear, for Sunny doesn't hang around long after WrestleMania, but someone almost as bad has taken her place. To help spice up LOD 2000 (as well as get a cheap push on a decent mid card star), Hawk and Animal were joined by Darren "Puke" Drosdov, who has now been named Droz. With Droz as a member of the team, and the lack of six man tag matches, one member of the team begins to feel as if he's being phased out. So, like Demolition before them, LOD 2000 begins to crumble. The crumbling begins when Hawk's gimmick is changed from a Chicago badass to a Scott Hall/Steve Austin/Jake Roberts drunk. To help push the fact that Hawk is now a drunk, they would have Hawk go on commentary during Animal & Droz's matches. With slurred speech and incoherent babble, we get a portrait of alcoholism that makes anything made by Lifetime look tame by comparison.

The madness of Hawk's boozing comes to a head one Monday night. During another lackluster LOD 2000 match, Hawk left the announce table after making an ass out of himself again, and proceeded to scale the TitanTron. The match was stopped, and Hawk's teammates rushed to his aid. Now, Hawk, the "drunk" that he was, actually made it up to the top of the TitanTron and threatened to jump. Soon, referees, security, Animal, Droz, and even now enemy Paul Ellering were standing underneath Hawk trying to talk him down.

Now, if you ever want to see the wrong way to break character in wrestling, watch this moment from RAW (if you can find it). There is such bad acting here (as if Hawk's already terrible drunk impression wasn't bad enough) to make "Plan Nine From Outer Space" look like "The Godfather" (aside from being a wrestling fan, I am also a movie junkie). After Animal and Ellering's pleas for sanity are shot down, Droz begins his climb up. Now, here is where the fun really starts. Droz looks to talk to Hawk for about five seconds before just grabbing Hawk and shoving him off the TitanTron. We see a stick figure fall behind the TitanTron and what sounds like a body landing about two seconds after science dictates that Hawk would have landed. Soon after, Hawk was rushed to the hospital and LOD 2000 wallowed in mid card Hell for about another few months before Droz went solo and Animal left the company.

Quick, we have one more stop to make, and the Wayback is starting to run out of gas...

Here we are, WCW, 2000. With the lack of Hawk, Animal has become the bodyguard for the Magnificent Seven. But, without Hawk, and the fact that WCW was almost dead at the time, let's just skip all the "funerals" and Hawk beating up on cruiserweights.

Well, there you have it, Rocco, Sunny, Droz, booze, a push, and the Magnificent Seven. More than enough bad memories to make the match against Rob Van Dam and Kane seem like a highlight rather than a lowlight. If the WWE can either scrap the LOD entirely, or just send them to OVW and hope for some of that massive amount of ring rust to be worked out. I say some because you know as well as I do, that there is no way that all that ring rust will ever be completely gone. Hell, look at Scott Steiner. He's been around for months, and he still has enough ring rust to make his matches suck.

by Emer Prevost